John was sitting at his usual table lost in thought when she sat down across from him. 



He looked up. At first he didn’t recognize her. There was something
different about her. Emerald eyes that had once darted around filled
with wonder, hinting at mischief yet to be unleashed, now sat dead
inside her head. The lines on her face were harder and the way she held
herself more stiff.



She wasn’t the girl he had taken here so many years ago. But that
didn’t matter. He’d been hoping for so long that she’d come it was all
he could do to keep himself from leaping up and making a spectacle of
himself in this high class establishment. The grin on his face was as
wide as a river. She came. She finally came back.



“You came!” His voice was filled with wonder and excitement.

“You didn’t”, she said simply.



She couldn’t have hurt him more if she had taken the candle burning in
the center of the table and shoved it into his eye.  Years of worrying
and wondering and searching and not knowing what to do came back to him
in a rush. His happiness was doused in an instance. He struggled with
himself trying to find the words to say to explain himself. For a time
he stumbled over his words, trying to describe all that had happened
over the last five years, trying to make her see things from his
perspective. But her face was impassive and his words sounded so empty
to his own ears. So false.



Finally he shut up, looked down at his plate, took a deep breathe and steadied himself.  He looked up into those impassive eyes.



“I tried.”



“But not very hard.”



“No. Not hard enough. I never claimed I was a hero.”



“You made me think you could be mine.”



“I’m sorry.”



The words stretched out between them and the silence dragged on. She
didn’t accept his apology. Yet she didn’t rage at him or accuse him.
She didn’t try to hurt him. And she didn’t turn away. The silent stare
was so much worse. The old Dee had had so much passion and energy in
all that she did. This girl before him seemed like nothing could stir
her.



Finally, John couldn’t take it anymore. He had to ask the one question he didn’t want to know the answer to.



“What happened to you?”



“You don’t want to know.”



“I have to. Tell me.”



There was a long pause. Finally she spoke.



“It was just like my dream.”



John shuddered. He’d told her to forget about the dream. He’d told her it was nothing. Begged her not to worry about it. It was just a dream.



“I was passed from owner to owner. Some were kind. Most weren’t. The
bad ones… they made me… ” She paused and then continued. “They took
away my freedom. I was not allowed to have an opinion or a voice. I was
not supposed to show emotion. They took away my identity. They took
away my name. And they gave me a new one. A pet name. They called me
Dig. Little Diggy. Dig the dog. Dig the Pig. Dig fetch my coat. Dig
make sure the kitchen is spotless by the time I get back. Strip for me
Dig…”



The description went on and on. The words were said without inflection.
But the rage behind them seared the air between them. John didn’t know
when he had started crying but he knew the tears were pouring down his
face now.



“If I’d know…”



Dee was unforgiving.



“You should have known. I waited for you. “



John shuddered again. He took a few deep breathes to pull himself
together. She was right of course. He’d known all along that he was the
only one who she’d trusted. He was the only one who could have helped
her if something was truly wrong. But he’d failed. Utterly. The gapping
truth of that was too much for him to face. So he clung to the one good
thought thatwas left to him.



“But you’re here! You got away somehow. You’re safe now.”  He reached out a hand toward her. She pulled away out of his reach.



John continued. “I swear to you I won’t let anybody ever hurt you or take you away again. I’ll protect you.”



For the first time Dee smiled but it was a cruel smile. She chuckled darkly.



“You couldn’t. You can’t.”



“I won’t fail.”



“It’s too late now John. It’s too late for you to save me. And I didn’t come here so that you could protect me.” 



She stood up.



“Why did you come then?”



“I came to tell you to stop looking for me.”



And with that she turned and started to walk out of the restaurant. For
a moment, John just watched her walk away, too much in shock to move.
But then he realized what was happening. No, he thought. I can’t lose her again.



He leaped up out of his chair knocking over his glass and ran around
the table, ran after her yelling for her to stop, to come back. As he
closed the gap between them, he reached out to grab her, to hold her to
him. To hold her tight and never let her go again.



And his hands passed through her. Dee was gone.



John looked around in terror and confusion. “NO!” he shouted out loud.
She can’t be gone! Not again! And his eyes lighted upon all the
restaurant patrons staring at him with shock and pity in their eyes.
And then as his gaze met theirs, as if on silent cue they all
studiously turned their heads away to leave him to his silent torment.



What was going? Where had Dee gone? Why were they all looking at him
like that? Didn’t they see how she’d vanished? Or had she never been
there in the first place? Was she just a figment of his grief shattered
mind? Maybe they were right to stare. Maybe he was going crazy.



Suddenly he remembered her words. I came to tell you to stop looking for me. John trembled from his head down to his toes. John knew. He wasn’t crazy. She’d told him plain as day.



It’s too late for you to save me.



John had never thought himself a strong man. But he surprised himself
that day. Somehow he managed to keep his feet even though he felt like
reality was crashing down around him. Somehow he held back the tears
that threatened to come rushing out in an endless flood. Somehow he
managed to make himself stand up straight, adjust his suit and walk
with dignity back to his table and ignore the surreptitious worried
glances being cast in his direction. Somehow.



He carelessly dropped money to pay his bill. And then he pulled out of
his pocket the gift he had held on to for all these years. He had
planned to give it to her but never got a chance. A key chain with a
carved dolphin with her initials carved into it. It wasn’t much. But he
knew she would have loved it. At least the old Dee would have. She’d
once told him the Dolphin was her spirit animal, that she felt a
special kinship to it. It reminded him of her too, the majestic freedom
of its movements. Free like she was always meant to be.



John left the box with the key chain on the chair that had been hers. He blew out the candle on the table.



“Happy Birthday Deanna.”



And then he let her go.

I really don’t. There’s nothing about him that inspires my hate. I look at him and I don’t feel passionate rage and disgust. I don’t feel a desire to eviscerate him for his crimes. Nor do I feel some sense of repulsion from him to the point that I can’t stay in the same room where a television is on and he’s giving a speech or I would run screaming if I ever had the misfortune to be in his presence.

I don’t feel that way at all. I know a lot of people do. But really I’m cool with the President. I don’t hate him. I don’t even dislike him particularly. He doesn’t even bother me personally in the slightest bit….

I just think he should be impeached, tried, convicted in national and international courts and sentenced to a considerably large amount of time in prison.

No offense intended. That’s just the way I see it.

Seriously, there’s no malice in that belief. I don’t have a problem with the Man. Personally, maybe we’d be friends if I knew him. I even get why he did what he did. I’ll even buy the idea that he and his followers espouse that he all along has had the very best interest of the country and indeed the world at heart.

Well so do I.

And the best thing for the country and the world is for the President and his Vice President and much of his administration to be put on an open public trial and brought to justice for the choices that they’ve made. Everything he’s done, every choice he’s made needs to be put up to public scrutiny. And for any national or international crimes he’s committed he should be held completely accountable.

For those who believe he’s in the right, that would be the perfect test too. Maybe he will be acquitted. I seriously doubt that, but if it did happen I’d be fine with that. Provided it’s ALL on the table and we all see everything and judge soundly on the basis of the reality of the facts of what has happened to our country.

That’s not the only way to fix the harm that has been done to the American government’s reputation at home and abroad, and it’s not the only way to fix the harm that has been done the checks and balances that lie at the heart of our conception of our democracy. It’s not the only way. But it’s the best way. It’s the cleanest and most comprehensive repudiation of the last eight years and would go a long way toward a quick healing of this divided, bleeding, lost and confused nation we live in.

It’s what should happen. Not because we hate the President, but because we love the Nation and we love Peace and we love Justice and we love ourselves and we want better for them all.

But sadly it’ll never happens. It’s far too late.

I know… I’m supposed to deplore the evil empire that is Microsoft and hail Apple as the great savior and champion of all that is good and right in the world. I’m supposed to swoon at the sight of the godlike beauty and elegance of the Apple interfaces and proclaim them the essence of Sheer Perfection manifest in physical form.

I know, I’m supposed to feel this way.

But I don’t.

I got a Macbook. I had to see what all the fuss was about. And I tried to use it.

At first I was impressed. The packaging was awesome. Truly I can easily be lured in my impressive packaging. I’m shallow like that. The Macbook box made me feel like I was getting something super cool. And I opened it up and yeah it’s a sleek looking little laptop. The build quality feels solid. And the fancy smancy magnetic power cable made me go oooooh.

But then from the very first moment I turned it on the system rubbed me the wrong way. First the mousepad thing just didn’t work the way I expected it to. It didn’t function like every other laptop mouse pad I’ve ever used. And I can’t comprehend why.

Later I found it annoying to do a simple thing like skip the registration process. Why was there no button just to say skip?  When selecting wireless networks the system provided me with a list that didn’t provide any significant information about any of the connections that might make it easier for me to determine which one was mine. As it happened I knew which connection was the one I wanted to connect to, but what if I hadn’t? What if I needed to know the signal strength in order to pick the right connection?

Later on when using the system, I played around with Safari. It’s slow and I hated it right away. I gave up pretty fast and switched to Firefox.  Downloading and installing apps was a weird process too. I’d heard so much about how easy the Application installation system was on Macs I expected to be impressed. I wasn’t. It presents me with this weird dialog box where I have to drag one icon over onto another icon for no apparent reason that I can comprehend. So weird.

As I played I noticed all kinds of other little annoyances. Like there were some applications in which cut and paste works and other applications where it doesn’t. Some applications would put these weird transparent windows up in the corner when I left the system idle and then they would stack up and annoy the hell out of me. One web based chat client I used would log me off every time I switched away from the tab it was on.

And all along I’m feeling desperately like I’m missing my damn right click. I use right click all the time in other OSes. Not having it was driving me insane.

The only time I had fun with the macbook was when I rebooted into the command line prompt and reset the laptop back to the default user settings so I could get rid of the thing. The command line was good old unix and it was fun and natural to work with. But even here I found an annoyance as when I tried to look online for instructions for how to reset the laptop and delete the user account I had created, all of the instructions were for older versions of Mac OS X. It took quite a while to find the accurate directions for the most recent iteration.

So no Macbooks for me. Sure I’d get used to it eventually and I’m sure there’d be things I’d like about it if I explored it in more depth, but for two to three times the price of what I can buy a (probably more powerful) PC laptop for, the thing should be Magical. I should be swooning at the sight of it. But I wasn’t.

It’s trash.

My Ipod I am a little more sympathetic toward but I also don’t think it even half way lives up to the hype. I have the 80 gb, 6th generation ipod and for the 6th generation you’d think they’d have gotten all the kinks worked out of it. But no… the User Interface is somewhat slow. The click wheel sticks annoyingly. The ipod has crashed several times and once even the reset procedure didn’t work on it.  And the whole way in which music is organized bothers me to no end. I have my music in folders on my computer the way I want it organized, why can’t I put it on my ipod in the same way and listen to the folders where I already have music sorted into?

So I’ll return my ipod probably and hopefully they’ll give me one that actually works and maybe I’ll give it a second chance. But right now I’m quite disillusioned with the whole Apple product line.

I used iMacs at college back in the old days and I didn’t like them much but that was a long time ago so I won’t hold that against them.

I’ve never used an iPhone. Honestly, I wanted one, but now I’m not sure if I will bother. I might get one just to try out and play with and return it, but I don’t think I’d keep it as my primary phone unless I find it far more impressive than my other Apple experiences.

So tell me, what’s the big deal with the Mac?

And just to disagree some more, let me say that I actually quite like Windows Vista too…

Alright, go ahead and lynch me.

I was going to join the Best Unepic Contest Evar here which is a contest about your Face Your Manga avatars.  But then I didn’t really have any time to devote to writing and then the rules changed to focus primarily on the avatar to real life comparison aspect which was the part I was least interested in, so I dropped out.  I thought the blogging about what your avatar was up to in Xangaland was the really cool part of the contest. I may one day post the entry I wrote for my avatar for that contest just for fun if I ever finsih it but for now I’m just laying low.

However, I did help my friend Melissa with her entry here.   And to be perfectly honest it’s hilarious (especially if you’ve been involved with the writing assignments and/or following her blog). I’m not sure if you’ll get my quirky brand of humour, but I’m really proud of the entry we managed to cook up! So if you want to be entertained I highly recommend you go over there and read it!

And if you are so inclined, feel free to go vote for someone too.

that enables me to freeze any group conversation I am in the middle of it. Basically it will make everyone else pause and give me one to ten minutes to think up what I want to say, formulate the words in which I want to say it, and build up the courage to actually say it, so that when I unfreeze I can say it.

Then people will react, say whatever they have to say and then during the next pause in the conversation, I’ll freeze time again and so on and so forth. Of course I’ll be the only one aware of these freezes as time will run normally for everyone else and it will seems like the most natural conversation in the world.

Maybe then I won’t feel like hurting myself at the end of every group encounter I am a part of.

I’m really incredibly grateful that I live in the era where there are things like instant messaging, text messaging, emails, and blogs. I think if I lived in another time I’d basically be effectively a mute.

Oh well, I survived anyway. Well I died a few times but those were mostly suicides from when I shot my rocket launcher into a wall by accident.

And some parts were even a lot of fun! … including the suicides. ^_^

Every once in a while people come along and get pissed off about what
they call Xanga Drama. They say “God, stop with the Drama already,
Can’t you all just grow up?”



And it’s true. Xanga has lots of drama. And sometimes I have to admit,
I find it rather annoying. I certainly don’t particularly WANT to be a
part of these crazy personality conflict that arise between various
peoples. I don’t like following the rumours and having to deal with the
question of who’s lying and who’s telling the truth and who’s story is
real and who did what to whom and said this to whoever. It gets tiring.
And I find people tiring already. The more Drama the worse it is.



And yet…. I don’t want the Drama to stop. Because Drama isn’t really
inherently a bad thing. It really really isn’t. Indeed in a very real
sense, the Drama is a large part of what makes Xanga distinctive. It’s
want makes Xanga more like a real community than
other blogging sites. In a very real sense, the Drama suggests that
Xangans really do care about their Xangan identities. They can be hurt
by something that someone says online. They can want revenge against
someone. They can believe in enforcing norms of morality and feel it’s
right to call someone out if they think that person is doing something
unjust.



“No no!”, you argue, “Xanga drama isn’t what makes Xanga a community,
it just changes Xanga from an adult community to a childish community.
I don’t want people to stop caring about Xanga, I just want Xangans to
GROW UP!”



But you know? I’ve always thought the word “childish” was a funny word.
Whenever I think of the activities commonly associated with the word
“childish”, it isn’t children that come to mind as the prime examples
of the exercist of these activities. It’s adults. It’s adults who
cheat. It’s adults who lie. It’s adults who attack and insult and
insinutate and try to discredit.  It’s adults who steal and it’s adults
who seek out revenge. It’s adults who I see throwing hissy fits and
being bitchy or crude or rude because of some minor manner that really
shouldn’t be a big deal at all.



But young children? Rarely. I mean sure children cry and complain but
it’s a much more honest kind of behavior for them. It’s the adults who
behave this way out of sheer vindictiveness, greed, or arrogance.  And
really the reason why our teenage years come to our mind as the prime
example of “childish” behavior, I believe that’s primarily because it
is as teenagers that we are most inclined to try to *emulate* adults.
It’s just easier to pick on teenagers about it because they are so
young and inexperienced that they do such a piss poor job of trying to
behave in a so-called “childish” manner.And so they make embarrassing mistakes and don’t get away with as much crap.



But don’t worry. They’re trying hard. Soon they’ll graduate to the same
level of childish machinations as any true adult and they’ll wield them
well to rise to power in our lovely competitive system that gives lip
service to the valuing of Just behavior while really giving advantage
to those who have no such inhibitions.



We really should not use the word childish, rather we should call all
these things “adultish”.  We should say xanga drama is too adultish and
people need to um… I dunno… grow down? shrink up?  something like
that…



Oh anyway I’ve totally lost my train of thought. But what I wanted to
say I guess is that Xanga drama’s not so bad. It’s no worse than
anything else in the adult world. We just deal with it. If you were
thinking that Xanga would be a haven for the honest and virtuous
amongst us, you were just deluding yourself. Be happy that Xanga is
real enough thta there is Drama. I’d much rather have it that way then
an empty forum where nobody knows anybody and we’re all just lost in
our own little worlds ranting to ourselves, unheard, unremarked, and
entirely irrelevant.

Now *some* people who shall remain nameless have decided to criticize
the recommend system. Now I’m not saying anything bad about *those*
people cuz I just wrote a whole post about how everyone should feel
fine about criticizing any aspect of Xanga they want in any language
they want.



But even though I’m definitely not criticizing you, and I totally
respect your opinion to say whatever you want, I will say this:

But really, I think the recommend system is awesome. Sheer awesomeness.
It is the best system Xanga has come up with yet for evaluating the
quality of a post. I think it could be made even better but I wouldn’t
get rid of it for the world.



Now there are two regularly given criticisms of the recommend system. They are:



1. People Recommend STUPID stuff that pisses *me* off

2. Recommends cause fights over what gets recommended



The people recommend stupid stuff critique is fascinating in that although it highlights a proposed flaw in the system, it is rarely
explicitly leveled at the system itself. Rather it is leveled at the
people doing the supposedly “bad” recommending. The posters say things
like “What the heck is wrong with people recommending me all this
crap?” And then they go into great detail explaining exactly what
should be recommended and what should *not* be recommended according to
their own brilliant evaluation system.



Or else they just say vaguely ” only recommend me stuff that is good!” 
Of course completely forgetting the simple and obvious fact that not
everybody thinks the same things ARE good.



The second critique is more serious. Here we are saying posts like the
above, and comments, and arguments over what gets recommends has a
destructive impact on the community. It raises tensions and lowers the
level of dialogue. People stop talking about content and focus on the
crazy fight over what is and is not recommendation worthy. And
ultimately people end up de-friending and unsubscribing one another in
a fit of rage or disgust over some recommendation whoha.



Now the interesting thing about both of these criticisms are, they are
actually describing precisely how the system was designed to work!



“What huh?”



You see, recommendations were created to fit a specific evaluation gap
based on the idea of accountability of evaluation and visibility of
evaluation. The star system was seen as flawed because it was too
anonymous. The eProp system didn’t work because it was too
insignificant and invisible. So they decided they wanted a system that
would be the exact opposite, a highly visible system that created heavy
accountability. There would be a *cost* associated with saying
something is good and abuse of said system would be to your detriment.
You’d lose subscribers and you’d lose friends if you didn’t recommend
wisely since nobody wants to get spammed with recommendations they
aren’t interested in.



So actually it can be said that the recommendation system was from the
get go supposed to result in people writing warning posts saying stuff
like “stop recommending me stupid shit!” And then when people still
recommend stupid stuff it would result in un-subscriptions and de-friending,
in effect people would “vote with their feet” and congregate on the
blogs that have the best content AND select the best content to be
recommend worthy. As a result, recommends of a like kind would cluster
around people with like interests bringing closer community bindings.
People who love comedic blogs would subscribe to other comedic blogs
and recommend other comedic blogs and so on. And if those same people
hate emotional blogs, they’d unsubscribe to those who post emotional
blogs and recommend emotional blogs. 



And the general interest blogs, the blogs that have broad ranging
appeal would get recommends from everyone. And nobody would complain
about them or unsubscribe because they were recommended. We could
expect them to bubble up to the top and then ultimately they’d get
accolades and get featured and whatnot.



And when you really think about all that, it’s actually pretty damn clever system isn’t it?



But the fundamental aspect of this is that it changes the way Xanga
works on a more fundamental level than eprops or stars ever did. Now
recommendations have a huge impact on what gets read and by whom and
when. You never had to *see* a five star entry unless you specifically
chose too look up things by star rating. Likewise with high eprops or
comment count entries. Recommends are different. Recommends are in your
face getting delivered to you universal inbox day after day.



Recommends have no rules or guidelines to them. Some people annoyed
with the system try to impose guidelines on others to say what they
should or should not recommend, but these meta declarations are
non-binding. People can recommend solely based on a singular internal
principal: “Do I want others to read or take note of this post or not?”



So no wonder some people find this disconcerting. It’s a very
democratic and open system. It grows and evolves based on how it is used. But like other open systems, like email, and the internet itself it can sometimes
seem like an overly chaotic system. It empowers undesirable uses just as much as it does the good.

Does this lower the level of
dialogue? Maybe for some. But on the large scale it radically increases
exposure to high quality content. It enables people to more effectively
get their thoughts and ideas out and to find those same high quality thoughts and ideas. It shrinks the scale of Xanga (flattens the world in a sense) making
Xanga feel like a smaller more close knit community.



And in a sense even the meta-dialogue *about* recommends is a very good
thing for the community even it gets a little heated at times. It gets
people talking about what counts as good blogging? What do Xangans
value in their blogs? What makes a blog popular and what gets us to
read something? It’s a very important discussion to be having I think,
since Xanga does position itself as a community rather than just a
random collection of web pages. And communities naturally evolve to
develop values and traditions. These values are only just and
representative when they arise through open communication and
discussion by the Xangans themselves.



So I *like* recommends. I have a number of suggestions for how I would
make recommends even better but I’ll leave those for another post. But
as it stands I think recommends are a great system and I really REALLY
hope Xanga never scraps it or if they do that they replace it with
something very similar.



That being said… I’m a bit of a hypocrite, as I don’t particularly
like having my own stuff recommended all the time. Too much attention
produces too much stress and I’m not fond of it, especially when it is
attention placed on an entry that might have been a little personal and
I didn’t particularly expect to have public appeal. But sometimes I do
like it when my stuff gets recommended. When it is stuff that I *want*
more people to read. So I guess I’m a little conflicted. Anyway this is
an entry I don’t mind getting recommended, I want others to read this and discuss it. Same goes with all the
disagreeing entries I’m going to post today. So if you think I’m not
spouting absolute nonsense and feel the urge to recommend by all means
do so. I shall be forever grateful.

Once
upon a time I was a member of a forum devoted to one of my favorite
games. And on this forum there was a member whose wisdom and knowledge
of the game was unsurpassed. He was a genius who had studied the game
down to its most minute details. And he was elegant and persuasive in
his writing about the game. He had numerous ideas about how to make the
game better, more balanced, easier to learn, and how to make players happier.
Now he wasn’t *always* right. Who is? Some of the things he said I
downright thought wouldn’t work. But everything he said was clearly a
*good* idea, well thought out and worth taking into serious
consideration. 

Well what happened to this amazing forum member?  Well he got banned of course.

You
see the forum was the forum of the game manufacturers and there was
just one thing about this guy that I forgot to mention…

He could be a royal pain in the ass.

I
mean he was blunt. He was rude. He was unyielding and without remorse.
If he thought something you said was stupid… he said so, and always
in what was perhaps the most insulting way possible. He didn’t insult
the people so much, but he would tear apart the idea in such a language
that made you, the originator, feel like you were less than the scum of
the earth. And of course he cursed up a storm.

And
he never backed down either. He wouldn’t ever apologize. He never
stopped challenging. If a forum member challenged him on something he
knew was right, the gloves would come off and he’d be merciless.
He’d send those poor writers crying home to their mommies. And he was
no less brutally honest to the developers of the game than he was to
random forum members. If he thought some decision was really idiotic he
would question the mental faculties of the person who originated the
idea.  By most measures, he was a real jerk at least a good portion of the time. (of course as with many people like that if you got to know him he was actually a pretty nice guy)

So
eventually some conflict got a little out of hand and on some poor
pretext the forum managers banned him. It’s arguable whether he even
really broke any of the rules. But he was labeled a troll and *most*
users who were aware of his existence were probably even happy to see
him go.

Later he went onto another forum
about the game and spouted his same crude brilliance and of course…
he got banned again.  I know not how many forums he got banned from but
now he resides in a small out of the way forum that only gets
relatively small traffic primarily from the people who followed him all
along.

Now some of you are probably
nodding to yourselves and thinking: “yup yup, serves him right!  He
needs to learn to be more polite! His parents should have taught him better manners! He should be more careful with his
language. How dare he insult the developers who are just doing their
best? What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he express himself in a calm and
reasonable way? Why’s he gotta be so dang difficult all the time?”

I
KNOW some of you are thinking that, because you’ve SAID as much before.
I can’t tell me how many times I’ve read Xanga entries that say
something along the lines of: “For Christ sake stop complaining about Xanga!”  And indeed, I’m sure I’ll read many more, because whenever the
criticisms of Xanga start to fly, or whenever a user is not particularly
careful in the way he or she states his or her negative opinion about
some aspect of Xanga, it doesn’t take long before people rally to
Xanga’s defense. And usually their defense is something along the lines
of: “If you don’t like Xanga shut up and go away and if you must
complain don’t be such a Dick about it!” 



Can there be any doubt that when people believe this they would have
seen the forum managers of my friend as having done the absolute right
thing by banning him and making him go away?

But I personally have a very different perspective:

I think they should have hired him.

Because
when all was said and done, he was RIGHT. Again and again and again he
was dead on. His understanding of the game was better than others. He’d
studied it more. He clearly *cared* about it more than most people. He
cared so much he refused to let it stay as it was. He wanted it to get
better. He wanted a game he could love.  And he was clearly not going
to rest or take no for an answer. He was the perfect critic.

And
better yet he brought together people who were similarly knowledgeable
and skilled. He attracted the people who had the intelligence and
awareness to be able to match him wit for wit. Exactly the kind of
people who could keep him honest when he, in his zeal, on occasion went
a little over board.

This is EXACTLY the
kind of person designers of any system need working for them. The kind
of person who can keep THEM honest. And he was doing it all for free!! 
The last thing they should have done was alienate him and make him go
away.

I have no doubt whatsoever that if
they had listened to him, the game would be extraordinarily better than
it is today. I might still be playing the game. I don’t. I can’t stand
the way the game has stagnated instead of improving when there were so
many ways it could have gotten better.  I guess I’ve been corrupted by
that crazy forum dweller. I can’t go back to the way the game was
before. Not when I know how much better it could be.

And
you know what? There are almost *always* people like that.  In every
forum I go to. Maybe not all of them are as surpassing brilliant as
this one person, and maybe a lot of them only *think* that they are.
But there’s *lots* of people who just aren’t particularly polite in
their criticism. But does that mean they should be ignored, shunned, or
told to grow up? I don’t think so. I think they should be listened to
just like everyone else, commiserate with the quality of their
criticism, no matter the nature of their presentation.

So I never agree with these posts that get posted that say stuff like:

“Shame on you, Xanga critics!” 

“How dare you not give the Xanga Team high praise for their work!”

“Stop whining and be happy with what you have!”


“Complain in private! We don’t want to hear it!”



“Go away and join some other blog if you don’t like Xanga!”

No…
I say… whine away! Be as rude and as crude as you want! If your ideas
are bad people will just ignore you. But if you have good ideas they’ll
filter through and be seen and be heard and if the Xanga Team is smart
they’ll follow up on them. They won’t ignore you just because you
happen to be a little rough around the edges in your presentation.
That’s part of what it means to be a professional at anything really.
It’s part of your job.
Your goal is to make the best product possible. It isn’t to rest on
your laurels and feel good about yourself. It’s not to protect your own
pride.

You see there’s always going to be people with different dispositions. Some people are going to make criticisms like this:

“Xanga
Team you are so wonderful and I love you and please please please don’t
take this as a criticism. But wouldn’t you possibly please consider
getting rid of the mini system? I mean it’s awesome and amazing and was
SUCH a great idea at the time, but it hasn’t been working out too well
and now I think it’s time for it to go away.”

And then they’ll list a bunch of reasons about what’s wrong with the mini system and close it up with something like:

“But
you’re all still wonderful! And I can’t imagine a better group of
people running Xanga. You’ve done such amazing things. Xanga is the
best blogging system EVER! Please don’t hate me!”

But
others are gonna wake up one day, after having lost their wife, gotten
fired, gambled away their fortune, shot their dog, and having a
horrible hang over and they are gonna log into Xanga and what will they
see waiting for them? A Mini. And they’ll think. Fucking minis. And they’ll rattle off a post real quick and it’ll go something like this:

“Listen
up you boneheaded Xanga Team fuckups! The mini system is absolute ASS!
They are so fucking retarded! If you don’t get rid of this system asap
I swear I’ll hunt you down rip out your spines and shove it down your
throats! And here’s what’s wrong with minis…”

And
then after that they’ll list perfectly reasonable well reasoned and
logical criticisms of the mini system. After which they’ll follow it up
with something like this:

“And that’s why
you HAVE to get rid of this shitty system! I mean I can’t believe you
could be so stupid as to come up with this crap in the first place? God
what is wrong with you! I could come up with something better in my
sleep. Fucking change it. Right now. Or else!”

And
then at the very itty bitty bottom of their post long after you’ve
stopped reading they might put a tiny little note that says something
like this:

“P.S. I love Xanga and I don’t know what I’d do without it.”

You see? Now why would you find that offensive? They aren’t really *trying* to piss you off.

That’s just the way they roll.

First and foremost I like to read my own blog. I narcissistically reread it over and over again and I often think thoughts like “Damn I’m good.” and “Why doesn’t everybody else write like me?” ^_^

I kid of course. I usually avoid rereading my own stuff like the plague actually I don’t even like proofreading.  I’d rather leave all the spelling and grammar mistakes as is for all time.

What blogs I DO read are mostly those of friends. Why? Because they are friends. Mostly.  And as far as I can tell they have virtually nothing in common besides the fact that they were written by people I arbitrarily determined that I would label with the word “friend”.

What I like to see in a blog is something even more vague. I find I can enjoy humorous blogs, political blogs, crusading blogs, slice of life blogs, story and poetry blogs, game creation blogs, rant blogs, angst blogs, relationship blogs, emo blogs, travel blogs, photo blogs, sarcastic blogs, news blogs, review blogs, childish blogs, contest blogs, philosophical blogs, cutesy blogs, religious blogs, video blogs, musical blogs, technological blogs, esoteric blogs, astronomical blogs, and really all manner of blogs imaginable presuming they share one characteristic:

Authenticity

I don’t mean that the blogger needs be telling the truth. I’ve read blogs where I’ve suspected 90% of what was being written was false. I just got that feeling. But I still enjoyed them because there was something authentic about them anyway. It’s like, hidden deep within those words and oh so obvious lies is who the person who wrote the blog REALLY is. The blog reflects who they are. As one of my friends told me: “Words are you on paper”. That’s what I like to read too, words that really are a person on paper. I want to read blogs that let me learn who someone is. What makes them tick.

In contrast some blogs I just can’t get into. Even though the writer may well be completely honest, and very skilled, and quite funny, it doesn’t feel like what they are writing is who they really are or in any way reflects them. Sometimes I just get this sense that they are playing to the crowd so to speak. Their blog doesn’t have any of themselves in them, it’s just what they think or perhaps know full well others want to read. It doesn’t feel real.

Still other blogs aren’t really playing to anyone, but they just feel empty to me… It’s as if the writer guards every aspect of their real thoughts and feelings to the point that I wonder why they bother to blog at all? All they are writing is just empty words.

This by the way is sort of why my blog doesnt’ have any kind of a focus whatsoever. At one point I considered focusing on something. Like make this blog entirely philosophical or political and write another blog that might be all about anime and another blog with personal journals and so on. But besides the fact that I don’t have the time to do that, in the end I also decided that I really don’t particularly LIKE focus. I’d rather my blog represent *me*. And I’m a lot more than my philosophical opinions or my journals or any one component. All these things are a part of who I am so I include all of these things in my blog. And I try not to hide any part too just because it might happen to be offensive or not be particularly entertaining to the readership. I want whatever readers I do have to be able to, if they squint hard enough, catch a glimpse of who I really am by reading between the lines of my chaotic unfocused unorganized incomprehensible blog. That’s how I write.  But I’m still far from really “authentic” in my blog. I tend to be a litle too analytical on the surface and that disguises some aspects of who I am underneathe. It’s a thing I’m still trying to learn to get better and better at.

But you know, even inauthentic blogs I still don’t mind reading. Every once in a while they are even interesting. It’s just that I *love* the authentic blogs. I love feeling like I’m meeting and getting to know someone absolutely fascinating while reading their blog.  People are amazing. And blogging is an amazing way to get to really know them.

However, there is a type of blog that I decidedly DON’T like to read. A kind that I avoid with the plague. That is, overly Judgmental blogs. What do I mean by that? I’m not entirely sure but I know it when I see it. I just hate reading it. When people paint a group of people in a certain light and proclaim them stupid or silly or rant about how much they dislike them and how they should change or some such nonsense *it bothers me*. It bothers me a lot. They are welcome to judge all they want, but I just don’t want or intend to read it.

And the funny thing is, I think even most of the blogs I’ve read, even the ones I love, every once in a while post a very judgmental entry. And I hate it. I dare say I’ve probably done so myself a time or two (though I can’t recall an instance), and if I have, I hate that too. Most people don’t even recognize when they are being judgmental, especially if the thing they are judging people about is considered commonly socially unacceptable. But to me that’s the most annoying kind of judgment, because it’s so very *safe*. You take no risk from judging someone badly for smelling bad to take an arbitrary example. Most will nod their heads in agreement. I’m probably the only one who would get annoyed with you for writing a blog like that.  Heck, I find the blogs that judge people on a controversial issue to be more palatable.  I’d rather read about your bias against someone on account of their skin color than your bias against someone because their clothes are wrinkled. Both I hate, but the former is at least *interesting*, you know?

And really, all of that just shows I’m kinda like the most judgmental person in the world, because the people I judge the harshest are all the judgmental people out there including you and I, and I find us all lacking…

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

I’ve seen a bunch of my friends posting these things on their blogs and to be perfectly honest with you… I think they are stupid.  But don’t tell my friends I said so.  Yeah they’re almost certainly reading this, but don’t tell them anyway

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	6.1
Mind:	5.9
Body:	4.5
Spirit:	6.4
Friends/Family:	3.3
Love:	1.5
Finance:	6.8
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

The thing about rate your life is that it assumes universal values and that we all put the same significance on the same aspects of our lives. I think that’s crap.

You Are 22% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well. In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

Apparently I’m really not very evil at all.

You Are Iceman

You tried to live a normal life, but it just wasn’t possible A bit of a slacker, you rather tell jokes than cultivate your powers Powers: turning self and others into ice, making ice weapons, becoming nearly invisible

This one was really kinda dumb. I played with it a lot and it was really hard to make a lot of variance in the outcomes. Most choices resulted in just a few outcomes.

Your Personality Profile

You are dependable, popular, and observant. Deep and thoughtful, you are prone to moodiness. In fact, your emotions tend to influence everything you do. You are unique, creative, and expressive. You don’t mind waving your freak flag every once and a while. And lucky for you, most people find your weird ways charming!

Your Personality is Very Rare (INFP)

Your personality type is dreamy, romantic, elegant, and expressive. Only about 5% of all people have your personality, including 6% of all women and 4% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving.

What Nephyo Means

N is for Nervy E is for Enchanting P is for Pure H is for Honest Y is for Young O is for Overwhelming